When describing access to public records, “slow” is the first word that comes to mind, Ken Eudy, a senior adviser to Gov. Roy Cooper said Monday, March 11, during a talk on government transparency at Elon University.

Eudy’s 30-minute speech came before a group of reporters and local government staffers at an event hosted by the N.C. Open Government Coalitionkicking off National Sunshine Week, an annual nationwide celebration of access to public records.

In a talk that started with a joke about being “off-the-record,” Eudy covered several topics, including his concerns over election ethics violations, his views on “gotcha journalism,” and his defense of how Cooper’s administration handled records requests about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

A journalist-turned-lobbyist-turned-bureaucrat, Eudy said he has seen all sides of transparency issues.

“I know that many of you ask the same question many times … ‘Why does it take so damn long, and why does it cost so damn much?’”

“It’s more complicated than it looks,” he answered.

Eudy pointed to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The ACP is an LLC formed in 2014 to build a 600-mile natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina. In 2018, the ACP provided Cooper a $57.8 million discretionary fund to spend at will for damage mitigation, economic development, and renewable energy projects. The move triggered controversy and an onslaught of public records requests.

Carolina Journal’s reporting raised concerns about the legality of the fund, which would have bypassed the General Assembly entirely. Legislators said the arrangement was unconstitutional and looked like a “pay-to-play” scheme, CJ has reported. In February, the General Assembly voted to redirect Cooper’s discretionary fund to the school systems in eight counties in the path of the pipeline.